adventures in post production

Tag: beginner

What is Forscene?

Forscene is a utility used by unscripted entertainment and documentaries, where there’s an edit producer who wants to do some kind of cutdown, but either doesn’t know Avid, production has decided they don’t want to rent another editing suite for the EP, or due to location it is not feasible to have an editing machine.

Forscene has the advantage of being much more user-friendly than Avid or other traditional NLEs. Its footage is stored on the cloud, which means that EPs can work from anywhere.

The Forscene machine is connected to one of the editing terminals, and then it is instructed to watch a specific folder that the media will be ingested to. It then transcodes the files locally and uploads them to the cloud, preserving original clip names and timecode. The EP can then rough out a sequence or pull selects and then export the sequence back into the NLE for the editor. The Forscene editing program is browser-based with minimal system requirements, and can be used anywhere a reliable internet connection is available. It is therefore well suited to remote work.

In freelance life you’re constantly learning new workflows, new equipment – and it can take a few moments to get used to everything. I like my mouse scroll set up fast. I like some Gestures and not others. I used to fix these things one by one, and then I made a list of all my favourite settings, so whenever I start on a new show I switch everything over at once! It only takes a few minutes.

What You Should Know Before Reading This Post

This document is intended for runners wishing to enter wrangling. It assumes no prior experience with wrangling, ingesting, data management or other related tasks. It is helpful if you are comfortable with OS X. You should know how to get to System Preferences, use Spotlight (⌘CMD+spacebar) and navigate quickly through Finder.

In this guide we will be using OS X Yosemite, Shotput Pro 5 or 6, VLC and Black Magic Disk Speed Test.